Good Friday/Thirty-Ninth Day of Lent
O God,
In the cross of Christ we glory.
We glory in the great grace you showed in the cross of Christ. We praise you that in dying on the cross Jesus made possible our forgiveness, our salvation, and our access to you.
We praise you that by your grace Christ died for us.
But do we praise you that by your grace we have died with Christ? Do we praise you that by your grace we have taken up our cross and are following him? Do we praise you by your grace we are losing our lives for his sake—and are thereby finding them?
Do we glory in our ongoing participation in the death of Christ on the cross?
We glory in what we gain from the cross but do we glory in what we give—and even in what we lose— through the cross?
On this day on which we glory in the cross a little more than we do on other days, give us grace to glory in it as Christians who have progressed in our following of Christ to the point that we are able and willing to praise you even more for what the cross enables us to do for you and for others than we do in what the cross has done for us.
Help us to glory in the humility and love—in the willingness and even the compulsion to love you with all we are and to love others so much that we think more highly of them than we do of ourselves and that we put their needs ahead of our own— that are ours because of the cross.
In the name of our crucified Lord we pray,
Amen.
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